NOVEL NEXT 133- I Want to Go to the Ball with You.
We're back at the academy, and Myrthaxya is once again hiding in the forest.
It's still early, just past eleven in the morning. I think we got up way too early, but I didn't expect us to clear the dungeon so quickly.
We give ourselves some time to. get cleaned up and agree to meet at the mission counter at noon.
Once in my room, I see my roommate putting what looks like a ball gown into her wardrobe.
"Hi, Judith," I greet her. "Getting ready for the big night? I still need to pick up my dress."
She startles a little when she hears me. She closes the door and turns toward me.
"Well, I have no choice but to attend the ball. My parents are coming all the way just to see me."
"And who's the lucky guy?" I smile at her.
We've been living together for months now, but this girl is still super shy. Not that I'm complaining—it's great that she's so studious and quiet.
"No one yet," she answers, somewhat embarrassed.
"Well, that just means the male students at this academy are idiots."
"What about you?" she asks, probably trying to change the subject.
"I'm going with my fiancé. What choice do I have!"
"Aren't you excited?" she seems surprised.
"I didn't choose him."
"Oh, right."
Oops… I keep forgetting that arranged marriages are the norm here, at least among the nobility.
"Want me to ask the guys in my group if they have dates?" it occurs to me.
Because Theodore is going with Mary, but Darius and Alistair haven't mentioned anything about who they're going to the ball with.
"No," she quickly tells me while turning red as a tomato.
"Sorry."
"Besides, you know people can go alone. It's fine. Statistically, fifteen percent of first-year students go without a date," she says while tucking a strand of her brown hair behind her ear.
"Well, I'd prefer that to having to go with Marco," I snort, making her smile.
I tell her I'm in a bit of a hurry and head to the adjoining room, the one with the bathtub. Too bad Berta isn't here to ask her to fill it, so I go get a couple of buckets of water myself to wash up. I wash the pup too.
Afterward, before leaving the bathroom—so I can do it calmly without Judith seeing me make weird gestures—I open my notifications.
Congratulations. You have leveled up. You are now level 10 and have one free stat point to allocate.
Great! And it was such a grind... Well, the next one is going to be even harder, because it's a whopping 22,026 XP. And what I have right now toward that new level is laughable.
Your earth control spell cannot level up due to the limitations of your Aetherblade specialization. To maintain balance, until you improve your basic air, fire, and water element spells to intermediate level, you cannot upgrade earth control to advanced level.
Ugh, that hurts. I have fire dart, breath control, and water splash at low level. I've been focusing on channeling arrows with fire instead of casting the dart spell...
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"Next time I'll fill the bathtub with water splash and heat it with fire darts," I mutter, annoyed with myself.
(Ridiculous: my water splash barely produces any water.)
And I can't say I didn't expect this because the system had warned me.
So what do I do in the dungeon?, I wonder with irony. Manipulate earth in the troll villages, earth walls, another wall for the yeti where I also use control...
I clench my lips tightly to avoid letting out a very unfeminine curse that Judith would definitely hear from the room. When I've calmed down, I open them to cast the breath control spell. I'm definitely planning to practice like crazy this afternoon, meditating as much as necessary to recover mana.
Next, I decide what to upgrade with my free stat point. I open my status screen.
Bianca L'Crom
Race: Human
Age: 18 years
Level: 10
Constitution: 7
Strength: 6
Intelligence: 8
Agility: 9
Wisdom: 10
Health Points: 9
Mana Points: 10
Alright. I could raise wisdom to 11 because I have 8 in intelligence. The other attributes aren't at 10, so for now I know they can keep going up. I won't count the stats the claws give me because they only work while I have them equipped on my hands.
What I have lowest is strength. If I learn claw mastery, I imagine it'll give me a point in strength. But I don't want to find out that my agility can't go to 11, even though it's not 10 yet. I'm tempted to put that point in wisdom or intelligence, but I'm going to place it in strength. And I'll buy that necklace from the point store as soon as I can, to raise my intelligence and mana.
Decided: I now have strength 7.
Once I'm ready, I go back to the room. I grab my school uniform jacket, the only piece I hadn't taken to the bathroom, say goodbye to Judith, and head to the auditorium.
Curiously, Ronan still hasn't arrived. Vincent has, though. He's waiting for us at the door.
Seeing him brings my conversation with Judith about the ball back to mind.
Shouldn't I break my engagement with Marco since I like the prince? His mother made it clear she'd look favorably on an engagement between us. It would make sense to go to the ball with him.
"Everything okay, Bianca?" he asks me.
A soft smile dances in his eyes.
Oh no, I've been staring at him like an idiot while thinking about the ball thing. I just don't know how to bring it up. He's the guy. He should be the one to do it.
"Yeah, have you been waiting long?"
"No, just a couple of minutes. I ran into Alistair, I'm meeting him and Darius in the gardens later if you want to come. They're kind of annoyed because they didn't go to any dungeon today. They skipped cleaning the other one from yesterday. They say they want to go with Theodore and me to the one we chose first for the trials."
"When was Theodore coming back?"
"Today."
"Wow, I don't think you're going to get out of going with them."
"Yeah, that's what I'm afraid of. Will you come with me later and convince them to go tomorrow on their own?"
He's so handsome! And when he looks at me asking for something, I get this terrible urge to say yes.
But no. I have to level up those two spells.
"Sorry, I need to practice some spells."
"And there's no way I can convince you?"
Oh, Vincent, don't say it like that, I think, feeling my cheeks burn.
Of course he can convince me, but I'm refusing. First things first.
Or would this be the perfect moment to give him a hint so he'll invite me to the ball?
"I..."
"Will you come?"
"No!"
That's not what I wanted to tell him.
He looks at me with a hurt expression. He's not very good at it. We both start laughing.
Then Ronan arrives and the three of us go into the auditorium.
They give us the 125 points corresponding to the 50 pouches of ice worm eggs. That's five missions we're collecting all at once. Since there are three of us, that's 41 points each. The two left over are lost, as Catrina already explained to us.
"Are you going to take another mission from the board?" the young woman behind the counter asks us.
"No. Not for now," I answer. "But we're leaving some items for you to sell and give us the money."
The coins from the chest were 7 gold and 40 silver. It's much less than in a chest from the other dungeon, but that new level of the desert dungeon had never been cleared, and the blue mountains dungeon gets farmed periodically by the army. Anyway, with what they give us for the non-magical items and what we each kept, we'll settle accounts.
"Of course, no problem. Do you want anything else?"
"No, thank you very much."
We say goodbye to her and, once past the auditorium door, we stop for a moment.
"41 points, I still can't believe it," Vincent comments.
"How many do you guys get for your mission?"
"The mission gave a total of ten points, not twenty-five like this one. And since we did it once and there were four of us, well, two each. When we go with Karina it'll still be two."
That's right, Karina... For a moment I'd forgotten about her. Well, now that I've cleared things up with Vincent, it shouldn't be a problem. No matter how clingy the girl gets with him, he's already made it clear that he wants to be with me.
Besides, it wouldn't be right for him to keep coming with us, since his friends need him.
We also say goodbye to Vincent, and Ronan and I head to the point store. So the merchant can see that we've delivered, and not in a day: in one morning.
He's definitely going to give us the new orders.